Ruth Rendell - Not in the Flesh

“And Miller, did he bring a manuscript?”

“You asked me that before,” she said. “He may have. How would I know? If he did Owen didn't say anything to me about it. He didn't like us laughing at them. He's got a soft heart, poor old thing, so maybe he kept it dark. He was well then, of course.”

Wexford wondered which piece of information that he had given her or question he had asked was responsible for the huge improvement in her spirits since she first walked into the house. Then she had been tense, anxious, but now as they left, her step was lighter and she looked young. It was no longer too difficult to believe that eleven years ago she had been the lover of a man of thirty-two.

“I'm off to see Owen,” she said conversationally. “With Maeve, of course. I mean, she'll have to drive me. I'm not prepared to go on the bus. You wouldn't give me a lift, I suppose?”

“I'm afraid not, Miss Ricardo,” he said.

His destination led him in the opposite direction to hers, back into Kingsmarkham. This suburban estate-many like it had sprung up around the town-lay quietly under a mother-of-pearl sky, November's sunset colors. One of the residents daringly mowed his lawn, another was cutting the last roses of the year, the bruised and misshapen flowers of late autumn. Irene McNeil's house had the indefinable look homes have in the daytime when their occupants are asleep. A shuttered silent look, a stillness.

If he hadn't known someone must be at home, Wexford would have given up after the second ring. But he pressed the bell a third time, there was a patter of soft footsteps, and Greg opened the door. Five minutes before, Wexford was sure, he had been asleep, had combed his hair on the way to let him in. His face was like the face of an infant who has been wakened too soon. But he wasn't one to lose his cool, as he might have said himself.

“Hi, Mr. Wexford, how're you?”

When this vacuous greeting started to become commonplace, Wexford resolved not to answer it in any circumstances. “I'd like to see Mrs. McNeil.”

“Oh, dear, she's fast asleep.”

“You'll do,” Wexford said. “In fact, you may do even better.”

Greg's smile grew wary as he invited Wexford in. “My pleasure,” he murmured but looked rather startled when asked for his full name.

“Gregory Brewster-Clark,” he said, and then, “May I ask why you want to know?”

“Well, yes, you may.” For a moment Wexford considered telling him he might ask but not necessarily get an answer. He relented. “You may think it outdated of me,” he said, “but I don't much care to call people I don't know by their given names.”

It was plain that Greg didn't know what a given name was. But he had got his answer and cheered up, skipping into the kitchen and asking if he could get him anything. Wexford thought he was more like a hairdresser than a carer. He could imagine him with scissors in his hand, asking a client if he wanted a teeny fraction more off the back.

“I'd like to see inside the cupboards and drawers,” he said.

Greg seemed to see nothing odd about this request. As far as he was concerned, any visitor male or female must have a burning desire to see his handiwork. Everything was clean and neat, sterile-looking and smelling of chlorine, as if an anesthetized patient might be brought in at any moment to await surgery. Happily, Greg opened one wall cupboard after another, displaying rows and stacks of matching china and glass. If there was food in this place it must all have been kept inside the fridge. A knife rack caught Wexford's attention but there was nothing of interest to be found in it.

Fortunately, it never seemed to occur to Greg to ask him what right he had to search Mrs. McNeil's kitchen. The word “warrant” would perhaps have been foreign to him. Wexford had expected an argument but, as he told Burden later, all he got was smiling acquiescence and a cup of excellent tea.

“First I had a look at the knife rack but the knives were all the same, with plain black handles. Then I asked to see inside the drawers. Greg showed not the least sign of suspicion. Maybe it's normal in the households where he works for visitors to scrutinize the culinary arrangements. Anyway, no knife. I asked him if there'd been a knife in any of the cupboards or drawers when he first arrived and did all this tidying up but he said no. I said I'd wait for Mrs. McNeil to wake up. I wanted to get back to this story of hers about the knife being stolen by the cleaner. For some reason I'd begun to believe it.”

Up till now having looked increasingly bored, Burden brightened. He lifted his beer tankard to his lips as if celebrating.

“Greg gave me tea. He gave me biscuits. He talked to me about all the various jobs he'd had, the hotels he'd worked in, his training as a nurse, as an overnight carer, on and on. I thought she'd never wake up. In the end I got him to wake her and he did-gently yet effectively, I must say.”

Burden nodded. “What happened?”

“I asked her. It always amazes me, Mike, the way our-er, customers lie and lie and when we finally tell them we know they've lied, we can prove they've lied, their lying is a fact, they're not ashamed, they don't say they're sorry or they feel guilty and what must we think of them, they just say, ‘Okay,’ or, ‘Right, so what?’ ”

Burden was quickly dismissive. “Well, they're a bunch of villains, aren't they? Low life. And Irene McNeil may be an upper-class snob, but she's as bad as any of them. What did she say?”

“When she went back to the house two years ago-on her way to have tea with the Pickfords, if you recall-she says she didn't look at the body, but she saw the knife lying on the floor of the cellar. She put it in her bag, where it presumably remained during the old ladies' tea party, then took it home with her. At this point she seems to have got confused because instead of seeing it as a useful piece of evidence in Ronald McNeil's defense, she decided it was a dangerous weapon, as indeed it is, and would somehow further implicate her husband and herself. I was angry by this time, Mike. I asked her if she knew wasting police time was an offense and she had recourse to ‘women's weapons, waterdrops.’ ” Wexford shook his head ruefully. “Hannah would lose all respect for me if she heard me say that.”

“You mean she cried?”

“That's it. Then she says she had a cleaner at the time-I had to listen to a long catalog of the woman's shortcomings-and this cleaner found the knife in a drawer somewhere and stole it.”

“And you believed her?”

“Just wait. I got the woman's name out of her and who do you think it is?”

“How should I know, Reg?”

“You're exactly the one who would know. She's called Leeanne Fincher, mother of Darrel Fincher. Remember her? She's the woman who gave her son a knife ‘for his own protection.’ ”

Burden laughed. “Amazing. We took the knife off him. We've still got it.”

“Excellent,” said Wexford. “I may add obstructing the police to the charges she already faces just the same. I've lost patience with Mrs. M. She may be old, but she's old in sin too. I'm going to show that knife to Bridget Cook, though I'm not at all sure what's the point of it, no pun intended.”

“So Miller did take the knife into the bathroom with him?”

“I don't think so. After McNeil shot Miller I think he searched the clothes in the kitchen, found the thousand pounds, which of course he was far too upright and honest to touch, but he also found the knife. He put it in the bathroom beside the body and later removed it to the cellar, maybe thinking it would help his cause with his wife if she could be made to believe he'd acted in self-defense.” Wexford cast up his eyes. “He need not have bothered. She's quite as ruthless as he was.”